UTM Tracking Essentials for Affiliate Creators

Published 2026-05-12 · Adbird Team

If you can't answer "which video drove these signups?" you can't double down on what works. UTMs are the cheapest way to fix this.

The 5 UTM parameters

• utm_source — where the click came from (tiktok, instagram, youtube)
• utm_medium — type of traffic (organic, bio, paid)
• utm_campaign — your campaign name (summer-launch, app-x-promo)
• utm_content — the specific video/post (video-id-123)
• utm_term — keyword/audience segment (optional)

Naming convention

Lowercase, no spaces, dashes-or-underscores. Be consistent. The same misspell twice wrecks your dashboards.

How Adbird helps

Every link Adbird generates already includes attribution. You don't need to manually add UTMs for the affiliate side — but adding utm_contentyourself helps you separate which of YOUR videos drove the conversion.